Factors associated with Quality of Life of Parents who Lost Children in the Sewol Ferry Disaster

Soonhee Yoon; Miok Kim; Sejin Ju

doi:10.12934/jkpmhn.2018.27.2.179

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Yoon, Kim, and Ju: Factors associated with Quality of Life of Parents who Lost Children in the Sewol Ferry Disaster

Original Article

J Korean Acad Psychiatr Ment Health Nurs 2018;27(2):179-188.

Published online: 17 June 2018

DOI: https://doi.org/10.12934/jkpmhn.2018.27.2.179

Factors associated with Quality of Life of Parents who Lost Children in the Sewol Ferry Disaster

Soonhee Yoon¹, Miok Kim², Sejin Ju³

¹Ansan Psychological Health Trauma Center, Ansan, Korea

²College of Nursing, Dankook University, Yongin, Korea

³Department of Nursing, Namseoul University, Cheonan, Korea

Corresponding author: Ju, Sejin https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3925-4273 Department of Nursing, Namseoul University, 91 Daehakro, Seonghwan-eup, Seobuk-gu, Cheonan 31020, Korea. Tel: +82-41-580-2714, Fax: +82-41-580-2931, E-mail: lovepdd@nsu.ac.kr

Received 1 March 201812 April 2018 Accepted 10 June 2018

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Purpose

This study aimed to (1) explore current levels of quality of life, depression, resilience and social support and (2) investigate factors associated with quality of life among parents who lost children in the Sewol ferry disaster.

Methods

Data for this descriptive and correlation study was collected from December 2016 to June 2017. Structured questionnaires were completed by 114 parents. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, independent t-tests, one-way ANOVA, Pearson correlation, and multivariate linear regression.

Results

Lower levels of quality of life were reported by parents with no current occupation, who considered emotional support by others as not helpful, not disclosing self as family of a victim, experiencing change in social activities related to the disaster, and not participating in bereavement activities with other families (all p values <.05). Factors associated with quality of life were depression (β=-.53) and resilience (β=.26) and explained 48.0% variance (F=50.37, p<.001), while social support was not a significant factor.

Conclusion

Our study findings provide fundamental information on the mental health status of families of the Sewol ferry disaster victims. Nursing interventions to improve quality of life of parents who lost their children in the disaster should emphasize both managing depression and improving resilience.

Keywords: Disasters, Quality of life, Depression, Resilience, psychological, Social support

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Table 1.

General Characteristics of Subjects (N=114)

Variables	Categories	n (%)
Age (year)	40~49	68 (59.6)
Age (year)	50~59	46 (40.4)
Gender	Male	35 (30.7)
Gender	Female	79 (69.3)
Spouse	Yes	96 (84.2)
Spouse	No	18 (15.8)
Surviving children	None	15 (13.2)
	One	72 (63.2)
	Two or more	27 (23.6)
Religion	Yes	62 (54.4)
Religion	No	52 (45.6)
Occupation before the incident	Employed	101 (88.6)
Occupation before the incident	Unemployed	13 (11.4)
Current occupation	Employed	31 (27.2)
Current occupation	Unemployed	83 (72.8)
Moved after the incident	Moved	70 (61.4)
Moved after the incident	Not moved	44 (38.6)
Psychological therapy	Received a therapy	70 (61.4)
Psychological therapy	None	44 (38.6)
Whether other's interest has helpful or not to overcome on psychological difficulties	Helpful	50 (43.9)
	None	64 (56.1)

Known as a victim's family	Known	11 (9.7)
Known as a victim's family	Unknown	103 (90.3)
Activities related incident after Sewol ferry disaster	Increased	26 (22.8)
	As usual	13 (11.4)
	Decreased	75 (65.8)
Participation in the victim-family activities	Participated	80 (70.2)
Participation in the victim-family activities	Not participated	34 (29.8)

Table 2.

Quality of Life, Depression, Resilience, and Social Support of Subjects (N=114)

Variables	Range of score	M±SD	Range of scale	M±SD
Quality of life	26~130	63.35±12.51	1~5	2.53±0.49
Depression	20~100	74.35±11.65	1~5	3.71±0.58
Resilience	25~175	102.17±24.59	1~7	4.08±0.98
Social support	25~125	80.12±15.08	1~5	3.20±0.60

Table 3.

Quality of life, Depression, Resilience, and Social Support according to General Characteristics (N=114)

Variables	Categories	Quality of life		Depression		Resilience		Social support
Variables	Categories	M±SD	t or F (p)	M±SD	t or F (p)	M±SD t	or F (p)	M±SD t	t or F (p)
Age (year)	40~49	62.21±12.31	-1.08	74.52±10.74	0.18	101.07±25.87	-0.58	80.45±16.01	0.28
Age (year)	50~59	65.04±12.75	(.280)	54.10±13.00	(.851)	103.80±22.75	(.553)	79.63±13.75	(.776)
Gender	Male	65.25±13.50	1.17	69.62±13.82	-2.98	102.02±22.16	-0.04	77.34±14.83	-1.31
Gender	Female	62.50±12.04	(.243)	76.45±9.95	(.003)	102.24±25.75	(.956)	81.25±15.12	(.192)
Spouse	Yes	64.09±12.48	1.47	73.83±12.05	-1.11	101.76±25.43	-0.41	79.21±15.67	-1.48
Spouse	No	59.38±12.24	(.144)	77.16±9.01	(.267)	104.38±20.02	(.679)	84.94±10.47	(.140)
Surviving children	None	66.33±10.41	1.40	73.73±12.71	2.40	103.40±26.67	1.38	103.40±26.67	1.38
	One	61.86±11.60	(.249)	76.00±9.47	(.095)	99.50±24.08	(.255)	99.50±24.08	(.255)
	≥Two	65.66±15.42		70.33±15.29		108.62±24.45		108.62±24.45
Religion	Yes	63.91±13.75	0.52	72.67±12.87	-1.69	100.62±27.11	-0.73	78.51±15.40	-1.24
Religion	No	62.67±1.94	(.599)	76.36±9.75	(.093)	104.01±21.33	(.456)	82.03±14.60	(.216)
Occupation before the incident	Employed	63.11±11.76	-0.47	74.78±11.50	1.08	102.65±24.29	0.57	80.10±14.60	-0.02
Occupation before the incident	Unemployed	65.15±17.81	(.635)	71.07±12.77	(.283)	98.46±27.60	(.565)	80.23±19.14	(.978)
Current occupation	Employed	71.00±11.22	4.28	67.58±12.21	-4.04	114.06±17.01	3.28	82.22±12.21	0.90
Current occupation	Unemployed	60.49±11.80	(＜.001)	76.89±10.42	(＜.001)	97.73±25.58 (	(＜.001)	79.33±16.02	(.365)
Moved after the incident	Moved	63.34±12.72	0.01	73.44±12.33	1.06	102.48±26.40	-0.16	80.51±14.93	-0.34
Moved after the incident	Not moved	63.36±12.31	(.997)	75.81±10.45	(.292)	101.68±21.70	(.856)	79.50±15.47	(.728)
Psychological therapy	Received a therapy	62.57±11.78	0.88	75.87±10.73	1.76	101.32±24.28	-0.45	81.51±14.77	1.24
Psychological therapy	None	64.59±13.63	(.379)	71.95±12.74	(.081)	103.52±25.31	(.645)	77.90±15.47	(.216)
Whether other's interest has helpful or not to overcome on psychological difficulties	Helpful	65.96±11.86	2.03	72.72±11.27	-1.33	109.44±21.17	2.87	85.06±12.66	3.21
	None	61.31±12.72	(.044)	75.64±11.87	(.186)	96.50±25.73	(.005)	76.26±15.77	(.002)
Known as a victim's family	Known	71.00±15.82	2.11	69.81±13.03	-1.36	110.54±21.37	1.18	80.00±19.57	-0.02
Known as a victim's family	Unknown	62.53±11.91	(.037)	74.84±11.29	(.175)	101.28±24.84	(.237)	80.13±14.64	(.977)
Activities related incident after Sewol ferry disaster^†	Increased^a As usual^b Decreased^c	59.46±12.17 78.84±14.24 62.12±10.34	14.42 (＜.001) a, c＜b	77.30±10.47 59.84±15.80 75.85±9.35	14.22 (＜.001) a, c＞b	95.50±29.33 119.38±15.50 101.50±22.94	4.41 (.014) a, c＜b	95.50±29.33 119.38±15.50 101.50±22.94	1.89 (.158)
Participation in the victim-family activities	Participated	61.65±11.83	-2.38	75.85±10.02	2.12	100.30±24.74	-1.25	78.88±15.63	-1.34
Participation in the victim-family activities	Not participated	67.35±13.32	(.019)	70.85±14.36	(.036)	106.58±24.02	(.213)	83.02±13.47	(.181)

^† Scheffé test.

Table 4.

Correlation between Quality of Life, Depression, Resilience, and Social Support (N=114)

Variables	Quality of life	Depression	Resilience	Social support
Variables	r (p)	r (p)	r (p)	r (p)
Quality of life	1	-.67 (＜.001)	.51 (＜.001)	.30 (＜.001)
Depression		1	-.43 (＜.001)	-.14 (.123)
Resilience			1	.48 (＜.001)
Social support				1

Table 5.

Influencing Factors of Quality of Life (N=114)

Variables	B	SE	β	t	p	△Adj. R²
(Constant)	91.76	8.71		10.52	＜.001
Block 1: Depression	-0.56	0.08	-.53	-6.92	＜.001	.43
Block 1+2: Resilience	0.13	0.04	.26	3.42	＜.001	.48
F=50.37, p＜.001, Durbin-Watson=1.89

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